TOMA! TOMALO! TOMA! TOMALO!

and, now i'm officially back in mexico! after my short jaunt over to the beautiful guatemala i'm ready to get back together with my dts family. i've been with the staff from our base for the last two weeks, and it's been great with them, but i miss the other students.

*this is a photo i took from up on one of the mountains looking back down at the town of San Miguel Chicaj. we took some time to pray for the seven spheres of influence there.*

we were in san miguel chicaj guatemala to do a week of what we call "Mission Adventures". this is a YWAM ministry that is aimed at allowing youth to have a personal encounter with Jesus and to expose them to missions. we had a lot of set backs and difficulties while trying to do this though. there was some miscommunication with the churches, and sometimes it was something small like not being able to practice worship before a session, but sometimes it was something big, like them not understanding that we were planning to do our own service and not just attend their regular children's service. so yeah, it was a little hard to stay positive. but we did! and it paid off!!

*this is where we had the sessions, note the sweet logo/decor i made. probably my greatest personal contribution to the event.*

we had three small services wednesday-friday nights, and had social time with the youth that were there. we invited all the youth we could find, visiting every church earlier in the week, and ended up with over fifty youth coming on the weekend to our Mission Adventures camp (that's a lot considering how small san miguel chicaj is). it was all day saturday and half of sunday. we had worship, preaching, games, taught dramas, performed dramas, and prayed a ton! it was AWESOME!! the kids were really affected by it. they said they all loved it and had fun, and a lot of them had some real spiritual breakthroughs. i was very proud of our team and especially ashley, who is on staff there in san miguel, who did a lot of the work. i love her! it was really good for me to see that staff again, because i loved getting to know them back in march when i went there, and they are great role models and amazing women of God. i learned a lot working with the staff (as opposed to the fellow students i usually work with) and am so appreciative of them dealing with the (white) student tagging along on their trip.

*worship with the youth, they really got into it all screaming and jumping around!*

*these were some of the youth that particularly enjoyed my poor spanish and company. i'm pretty sure the one on the right (Harold!) had a crush on me. they were so sweet though!*

we had the last couple days "free" meaning we've had to travel back to mexico. i spent a day in Antigua, Guatemala, which is adorable. i really liked it there and wished i had more time (and money) to spend there. and then we had a 15 hour day of bus rides to get back to Tuxla, Chiapas, Mexico where we had a free night in a 5-star hotel that we got with our plane tickets. it was SO good to relax. though i don't feel quite rejuvenated since all we did was basically sleep here, but it was nice. i took a bath for the first time in months, it was glorious! haha.

*me and the beautiful Paloma afront the beautiful fountain at the center of the beautiful parque in the middle of beautiful Antigua*

*with tita and anabel who are also on staff enjoying a (much desired) warm brownie sundae at Monoloco in Antigua*

and so now i leave for the airport to meet back up with my mexicanos there. right after another game of "what i miss, what i don't miss"!

what i miss:

   american deserts (real ice cream, chocolate cake, chocolate chip cookies!)

   consistent showers/laundry machines

   driving

what i don't miss:

   paying more that $6 to stay in a hotel

   studying

   not having the excuse that i'm a missionary to have clothes that don't match and messy hair.

second time out of mexico in four months.

I've officially left my DTS team in Mexico without their precious gringa.

This is because I'm in Guatemala with the full-time staff from our base back in Tecate. It was really sad to leave my team, but it's also going to be really fun working with the staff. We're in Guatemala City tonight, and head over to SAN MIGUEL CHICAJ tomorrow! WOOHOO!!! That's where I went over spring break, and I'm SO excited to be going back!

This last week we did some touristy things in Pachuca. We went to a little town that reminded me eerily of a mexican version of Salzburg. And then we went to the Teotihuacan Pyramids! That was really cool. Then we headed to Xochimilco, Mexico City. There we stayed at a church and did some street ministry, a church service, and then did some hardcore labor at a house that the church bought that they're hoping to make into a rehabilitation center. It was really cool being at the church, because one of the women who work there has the gift of prophesy and far before we were planning on going there during outreach, she prophesied about our group coming. It felt good to have that sort of affirmation about what we're doing.

brazos de misericodia

this week has been amazing for me! i LOVE working with youth. and that's what we've been doing. we did a mini-DTS for some youth at a local church. they were so great! we spent time each morning sharing some testimonies and giving teachings about what we've learned during our DTS. and then we taught them some of the dramas that we learned so they can continue to use them in their evangelism. it felt so good to be discipling so directly. it was really rewarding because they were so receptive. tonight we had a service at which we had them perform all the stuff they learned, and one of them gave her testimony. i was so proud to see them using what we taught them. and we went door to door to invite people, and it was good to teach and encourage them in that way as well, because although i don't particularly like door to door evangelism, we need to learn to be more willing to talk to anyone we meet about Christ, and that was a good step.

BAWLS!

so last weekend we made the trek from San Quintin all the way down to Pachuca. this meant three days in a van with fourteen people through the mexican desert in the middle of summer. yes, it felt like hell, quite literally. we were miserable for most of it because there's no A/C in the van and we were all cramped and only stopped to go to the bathroom and get gas. however, we did stop in Mazatlan at one of our staff, Ana's parent's house. we had some good eatin' there and ended up spending the night because our drivers were too tired. this was a blessing because we were able to take showers there (PTL)! and then we headed on the rest of our journey. i was able to use my excellent creativity (mixed with that of my friends) to keep some of us decently entertained during a lot of the ride. we played all sorts of games, from "I Spy" to "GHOST" to "Truth or Dare" (which was surprisingly effective in a van full up of people) to a game we invented called "BAWLS" and even more. it was bood (a word we invented that means something is so bad it's good). we got to Mexico City pretty late Monday night, and got lost finding our way from there to Pachuca. we ended up getting pulled over by the police (which happened a lot on this trip) but in the end they decided to give us a police escort to where we needed to go to get to Pachuca. then we just had to find our way to the YWAM base there, which happened around two a.m.

this week, we're doing a sort of mini-DTS for some youth at a local church.  we've been sharing what we learned during our lecture phase, and just some of our experience with missions and serving God in general. i'm doing some teaching this morning. we've also been teaching them a couple of our dramas and children's songs/dances that they can use in their ministry. we're taking them out tomorrow to actually put it all into practice. i'm excited!

OUTREACH!

Sorry it's been so long. A lot has happened and I haven't had much internet. But this is my quick attempt to update.

Our last two weeks of lecture in Tecate were great! We had Donna MacGowan come and talk to us about the fear of the Lord, which was amazing, she was amazing! She used a lot of good techniques to have us teach each other, and share what we thought which was very engaging. she also spent a lot of time with us which was good. we baked together, she taught us some good exercises from the ywam fitness school in Denver (where she's from) and she even let me dye her hair (i'm starting to seriously consider the first ywam beauty school/tattoo parlor idea).

Then the next week we had Edgar from Monterrey cone and teach us dramas and dance. I LOVED THIS!!! even though i got nasty bruises and scrapes and unbelievably sore, it was so good! after four intense days of that, we had NIKO. I can't really talk about NIKO because it's a hardcore bootcamp missionary training thing that's kinda top secret. But i can tell you that it sucked. Well, I was pushed past my physical limits, and someone got sent to the hospital so we had to end early. those two things kinda made it a little less than amazing. But i'm sure someday I'll see what all I learned from it. It did have it's good points though. a bit of insanity on my part. but it was alright.

During that week two more of our team went home. two of my favorites. Courtney and Israel. This has been REEEEEALLY hard for me. I'm still dealing.

And now we're on outreach. We're just wrapping up our first week that was spent here in San Quintin and we leave tomorrow morning for Mexico City. We've been sleeping on a cement floor in an "apartment" with a toilet that we fortunately fixed and a cold shower. but hey! there's running water. no electricity, but who needs that when you've got a guitar. me and Dina have been getting sick, so we could use some prayer for our health. and sleeping on a cement floor that just won't stay clean doesn't help. We've been eating amazingly well! Julio, our leader, is from here, and we're staying very close to his parents house, so his mother makes us most of our meals. Otherwise the churches and daycare we've been at have fed us well.

We've done two church services, two VBS style ministries, one day of labor at a daycare painting furniture, and two huge evangelism programs in the migrant camps here. One of them had over 1,000 people living there, and more than 600 came to our program. 50 people gave their lives to Christ. Our programs usually consist of a lot of children's songs and dances, puppets, and such. then a couple dramas, a testimony and a message. Sometimes even a video. I've dressed up like a clown almost every day at some point, which is actually really fun. the kids love our programs. it's completely exhausting though. especially because i'm in a lot of them. I'm the main character in one of our dramas to the song "The Clincher" by Chevelle (i know!) and basically I get beat up the whole time. Literally thrown to the ground. I'll have to upload a video of it if I can. I don't have my camera because I think I left it in the van going to San Diego, but someone has the video of it so we'll make it work. But it's so good. We made people cry. yessss! I love Jesus!

So outreach is starting off well. I've been having fun even though my body feels terrible. But the Mexicans and I are happy. OH! and we have another American, John Paul. He did his DTS last winter in Switzerland (a snowboarding DTS!!!) and he and his dad were called to Tecate, so they showed up the week before we left, and we all decided that he should come with us. So now there are TWO gringos and a bunch of Mexicans again. he's very cool and makes it a lot of fun here.

We have another church service tonight, and then we head out tomorrow morning for our three day straight drive (only stopping for the bathroom) to Mexico City!!! I'm excited, but it's gonna be rough. We have 11 students and two staff now, with all our luggage for 2 months all in one van. we barely fit, we're literally sitting on each other. and we're adding two more staff before we go to Mexico City. yeeeah. it'll be tight. for three entire days. that's a long time. pray for me! haha!